NRI Pulse Staff Report
Atlanta, GA: Shruthilaya Carnatic Music School celebrated the annual Composers Day event on March 5th at the Hindu Temple of Atlanta.
The event started with bhajans and keertanas by kids of Geetham levels. They were ably accompanied on the violin and mridangam by budding talents Kirti Subramanian, Gautam Krishnan , Anirudhah Narayan, Varsha Ramalingam and Sriman Thangaraj.
Pancharatna kritis, the five gems of Saint Tyagaraja were rendered starting with Sri Ganapathini in ragam saurastram.
Kala Vasudevan led the group singing with Gayatri Krishnan , Ranjani Yoganand, Anuradha Rao, Divya Sukumar, Meera Jandayala and Sandhya Ramachandran .
Additional vocal support was given by Sanjana Rao, Divya Umapathy, Smruthi Balasubramaniam, Tanvi Raj and Supritha Jagannathan.
The whole segment got enhanced by the instrumentalists C.V Subramanian and Jassotha Balasubramanian on the violin, Prashanth Kallur and Jayashri Rajagopalan on the flute, Usha Venkatachalam on the veena, Ravi Subramanian on the electric guitar, Suresh Kothandaraman, Santosh Chandru and Amit Narayan on the mridangam , Vikash Achutaramaiah on the morsing & kanjira.
The second segment started with a scintillating flute concert by Prashanth Kallur accompanied by Jassotha Balasubramanian on the violin, Suresh Kothandaraman on the mridangam & Vikash Achutaramaiah on the morsing.
The concert was followed with soulful renditions presented by children and adult students, with compositions of trinity, pre and post trinity .
An ensemble was another highlight of the event. Carnatic vocals by Shruthilaya students collaborated with Sebastian School of Music for western violins along with Indian and western percussion.
Excellence & Recognition Awards were presented to selected students based on their progress.
The sound system was competently handled by Adam Vernon.
The daylong event of musical bliss concluded with mangalam.